I Had No Idea Japanese Melons Could Be So Damn Terrifying

There are local characters in Japan called “yura kyara” (“weak” or “laid back” characters). They often promote local businesses or produce. And being Japanese characters, they’re generally cute. So to promote Yubari melons, which are generally seen as being “cute” as well as often expensive, you’d think the yura kyara would be cute. You’d be…

Metal Gear creator Hideo Kojima doesn’t want to be “the Metal Gear guy”. So, maybe make something else?

This Desktop Design for Gaming Addicts Would “Ruin” Humanity

Sometimes you settle in for some PC gaming or web surfing. And you just don’t get up. You can feel your bum go numb and the chair meld into your skin. Surely, you know the feeling. If so, maybe the above internet-produced desktop design would appeal to you. And if it appealed to enough people,…

Want to use your PlayStation 2 controller to play Wii or Wii U games? There’s a peripheral for that

You Cannot Stop This Manga Artist with Threats of Death and Destruction

For months now, Japanese manga artist Tadatoshi Fujimaki has been dealing with repeated threats. There is a vendetta against him, which has produced numerous threatening letters containing suspicious chemicals. As previously detailed, the threats are apparently from one angry individual who seems intent on stopping Fujimaki from promoting his manga Kuroko’s Basketball. The threats are…

Unicorn Lair in North Korea? Surely, the Communist Government Is Kidding, Right?

Unicorns are the stuff of, I dunno, unicorns. They’re fantasy! This isn’t the 1600s, and we know better. But in North Korea, which sometimes seems like it’s stuck in the 1600s, the government’s central news agency is running a story about a unicorn lair. That’s correct, a lair where a unicorn lived. Here is the…

The Lightning Returns Logo Took a Very Long Time to Design

Some things can be finished quickly. Some things take time. The Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII logo, it seems, took time. A lot of time. On the game’s official Twitter, someone from the Square Enix publicity department said “it took an exceedingly amount of time to arrive at the design”. Creating it was a long…

One Piece Is Still One Cruel Mistress

Eiichiro Oda writes and draws the biggest selling manga of all time, One Piece. Oda didn’t do that by sitting around on his ass. Well, actually he did, because he works from a desk. But he sure didn’t make One Piece so successful by lollygagging around. In a recent manga interview, Oda was asked about…

Forget the Haters, Japan *Hearts* Call of Duty

The conventional wisdom has always been Japan loves role-playing games and dislikes first-person shooters. First-person shooters, pundits said, were popular only with Western gamers. The pundits and conventional wisdom, it seems, are wrong. In its debut week, Call of Duty: Black Ops II on the PS3 is the second best selling game in Japan, moving…

How To Beg Your Dad To Buy You a Console

In 1999, Buzzfeed’s Josh Fjelstad really, really wanted an N64. And hey, it was 1999, so did a lot of kids. But what Josh did to actually get one was… different. Instead of just asking, or sulking, or whatever else kids do to try and get their way, Josh sat down and wrote a letter.…

Del Toro’s Horror Game Rises From The Grave At New Studio

Guillermo Del Toro had been helping out on a video game with THQ before, well, THQ basically ran out of money. But that doesn’t mean the game is dead. Movie site Bloody Disgusting is reporting that the game idea, which is actually planned to be a trilogy, was shipped around to other studios and… picked…

Now That is One Good-Looking Future Ship

Long Ouyang is a concept artist who works at WETA, they of The Hobbit, District 9 and Lord of the Rings fame. He’s previously done some game work, including iOS titles. Anyway, today is a good day to show off his stuff, because chances are you saw some of it earlier this week. Where? In…

Turns Out a Lot of People Have no Idea What the Hell a Wii U is

Last night, an Australian TV commercial for the Wii U came on. My wife looked at it, then at me, then back at it, then at our Wii, before finally asking “wait, don’t we have a Wii? What’s this?” While a single anecdote, it sums up my biggest concern for Nintendo’s new console, at least…

Are You Hard Enough To Wear Dark Souls On Your Chest?

Not content with releasing just one line of shirts this month, the friends of Kotaku at Meat Bun have released a second, and this one’s all about souls. That means shirts based on Ghosts’n Goblins and… well, a ton based on Dark Souls, like the awesome anatomical cut-away of a Mimic and the awesomer Alvina…

Russian Criminals Use Grand Theft Auto Fan Art In Ads For Bank Robberies

A seedy underground of Russian criminals has gotten so brazen it’s taken to posting advertisements offering the services of its expert “bank robbers”. These crims, who mostly employ “cyberheists and tax fraud” to lift money from US banks, even go into detail about the kind of things they can offer prospective employers, as listed on…

But What Did Internet Morons Think Of Vice City’s New Trailer?

Taking inspiration from a treatment on the latest GTAV trailer, reader Adriaan has wonderfully gone through YouTube comments on the latest Vice City iOS clip, presenting them in isolation for our enjoyment. Some are touching. Some even contain a sliver of truth. Most, though, are hilariously bonkers, just like you hope/expect YouTube comments to be.…

Transforming Minecraft Maps Into Stunning Works of Art

When you play Minecraft, it’s in your face, it’s blocky, and it’s all rather immediate. You rarely get the sense of scale, or even wonder, that an entire world can contain from any single vantage point. The game’s simplistic graphics don’t help things. But, as PC Gamer explains, when you convert a Minecraft world into…

And Now, This Weatherman Will Read The Forecast In Elvish

It’s sort of been unofficial Lord of the Rings week here at Kotaku, hasn’t it? Guess everyone’s just excited about The Hobbit This amazing video shows a weatherman in New Zealand going into full cosplay and reading the weather… in Elvish. He’s not exactly Liv Tyler, but his accent sounds pretty good! This is some…

The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Recreated in LEGO, is Blowing My Socks Off

Brotherhood Workshop return with another LEGO Lord of the Rings video, this time about Helm’s Deep. An epic battle deserves an epic recreation in LEGO, and this clip doesn’t disappoint. LEGO The Battle of Helm’s Deep [YouTube]

No, President Obama is Not Plugging NBA 2K13 With His #my2K Campaign

On a long drive back yesterday evening I heard over the radio that President Obama, using the White House bully pulpit in deficit negotiations, had opened a social media campaign designed to pressure Congressional Republicans. If tax cuts set to expire on Jan. 1 do so, middle-class families would take a cash hit of around…